Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

January is the month when most gardeners buy their seed potatoes. However, Morrice Innes, a kilt-wearing Scot from Newmachar, north of Aberdeen, isn’t interested in a few spuds for the allotment or veg plot. He has the largest collection in the world, some 500 or so varieties acquired over the past 20 years.

More than 100 were shown at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show and for the past two years Morrice, helped by his wife, Ann, his sponsors Thompson & Morgan and fellow Scottish potato enthusiasts John and Rhona Marshall, has won two gold medals at the show. The Queen spent a long time looking at the colourful display last year and the team will be back this year in search of a third gold.

Staging potatoes isn’t as easy as it looks. This year’s exhibit took the team four days to clean, label and arrange each variety. When they’d finished, the smooth tubers in shades of ruby, purple, cream and peat-brown shone out against the black baize like heather on a grouse moor. That’s appropriate, because Scotland has a worldwide reputation for producing seed potatoes. The cool climate limits fungal diseases, such as blight, and discourages virus-spreading aphids. Scottish seed potatoes are sought out across the world for their health and vigour.

The James Hutton Institute, west of Aberdeen, holds the Commonwealth Potato Collection, the UK’s gene bank. Morrice’s display contained some of the collection’s wild species, small colourful tubers collected in the foothills of Chile and Peru, along with heritage and new varieties. They tell the story of the potato, from knobbly marbles to small boulders. Potatoes are important nutritionally and are potentially the most productive food crop (i.e. contain the highest calorific value) per acre. China grows the most and the Chinese government plans to boost production, despite that nation’s preference for waist-expanding chips rather than boiled or baked.

Morrice has grown potatoes all his life. “I grew up on a family farm in Aberdeenshire where we grew first-early potatoes for the market in Aberdeen. I then went to study and work at Rowett Research Institute near Edinburgh to study animal nutrition – beef cattle, ­really.

“In 1990 I took early retirement and bought a smallholding just north of Aberdeen. I’d always been interested in growing potatoes for local competitions. Gradually I swapped tubers with others and my collection increased. In 1996 I took over the mail-order business of Donald Maclean and we inherited 250 varieties. At one time we had between 700 and 800, but we’re now down to roughly 500.”

His oldest variety is 'Karaparea’, taken to New Zealand by Captain Cook circa 1770. “It was rediscovered on a Maori farm in the South Island of New Zealand – they have grown it since it came off Captain Cook’s ship,” Morrice says. He also has some Victorian varieties raised in the wake of the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852), which was caused by potato blight. The disease resulted in new breeding programmes; one of the most successful breeders was Archibald Findlay, a Scotsman from Fife who worked in Lincolnshire. He produced a reliable variety named ­'Majestic’ in 1911 and it became the most widely grown potato in Britain until the Sixties.

Arran VictoryCredit:
wda bravo/Alamy

Scottish potato expert Alan Romans claims that ­'Majestic’ helped win the Second World War. 'Majestic’, although still available, was eventually replaced by the English variety 'Maris Piper’ (1964) and the Scottish 'Pentland Crown’ (1959). 'Pink Fir Apple’ (1850), a French salad variety that’s harvested very late, is still grown today.

“It’s not blight-resistant, but if you can get it to grow well it is excellent,” says Morrice. The long, pink tubers have yellow waxy flesh and it’s been used to breed other waxy varieties that don’t disintegrate when cooked. Morrice steams his potatoes, and also enjoys some of those with coloured flesh. He recommends cooking these with the skin on to retain the colour.

Home-grown potatoes are probably the easiest crop of all; freshly dug they’re full of flavour and quite unlike stored potatoes. Blight can be a problem, and the home gardener has little to fight it with. Morrice’s advice is to concentrate on growing first and second earlies which can be lifted before the wave of blight arrives in August. His chosen varieties are not all earlies, but they are packed with flavour.

One of the delights of putting together the Chelsea display is enthusing gardeners about the number of varieties on offer. Twenty-five years ago most seed catalogues stocked just a few, but Colin Randel of Thompson & Morgan changed all that – and now there’s a huge selection out there waiting for you.